(Trinidad Guardian) Several parts of Trinidad were left without electricity for several hours last night, after the T&T Electricity Commission (T&TEC) was hit by another blackout.
Speaking with Guardian Media soon after customers began complaining about power outages across the island around 7.35 pm, T&TEC general manager Kelvin Ramsook confirmed that 30 per cent the island had no electricity.
Ramsook explained that was an issue with one of the towers that supplies the Union-Ghandi line in south Trinidad but assured they were investigating the matter.
At that time, there were reports of outages in Curepe, Diego Martin, Penal, Macoya, Malabar, Chin Chin and Piparo.
Ramsook said power should have been restored within a few minutes in most places but as late as 10 pm in others.
However, in an update a few hours later, at 9 pm, T&TEC said the electricity supply was expected to be restored in two and a half hours across Trinidad.
Corporate communications manager Annabelle Brasnell explained to Guardian Media that the other independent power providers (IPPs) were providing additional capacity to serve the customers who were currently affected by the outage, leading to a restoration of supply.
She added, “However, we should note that within the early morning, when the demand again increases and customers are using more electricity, we anticipate that we may need to institute load shedding once again to manage the available electricity supply.”
T&TEC is asking customers to conserve electricity and reduce the usage of appliances that require large capacities, such as air conditioning units and water heaters, as it will assist in managing the load.
At approximately 7.30 pm yesterday, many areas across Trinidad lost power supply.
T&TEC subsequently indicated that due to a landslide at Grant Trace, Rousillac, a 220-kilovolt transmission tower that transmits power from the Trinidad Generation Unlimited (TGU) plant in La Brea to the rest of the grid fell, leaving approximately 30 per cent of customers out of supply. T&TEC immediately implemented rolling load shedding while engineers assessed the situation.
The Trinidad Generation Unlimited is Trinidad’s largest power generation plant.
Ten days ago, on August 6, thousands of customers also lost power across Trinidad due to a power generation issue, with T&TEC restoring supply within four hours.
WASA last night also said the power failure had impacted several of its plants across the country.
